CVE-2025-21707 - Use of Uninitialized Resource

Severity

55%

Complexity

18%

Confidentiality

60%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mptcp: consolidate suboption status MPTCP maintains the received sub-options status is the bitmask carrying the received suboptions and in several bitfields carrying per suboption additional info. Zeroing the bitmask before parsing is not enough to ensure a consistent status, and the MPTCP code has to additionally clear some bitfiled depending on the actually parsed suboption. The above schema is fragile, and syzbot managed to trigger a path where a relevant bitfield is not cleared/initialized: BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in __mptcp_expand_seq net/mptcp/options.c:1030 [inline] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in mptcp_expand_seq net/mptcp/protocol.h:864 [inline] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in ack_update_msk net/mptcp/options.c:1060 [inline] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in mptcp_incoming_options+0x2036/0x3d30 net/mptcp/options.c:1209 __mptcp_expand_seq net/mptcp/options.c:1030 [inline] mptcp_expand_seq net/mptcp/protocol.h:864 [inline] ack_update_msk net/mptcp/options.c:1060 [inline] mptcp_incoming_options+0x2036/0x3d30 net/mptcp/options.c:1209 tcp_data_queue+0xb4/0x7be0 net/ipv4/tcp_input.c:5233 tcp_rcv_established+0x1061/0x2510 net/ipv4/tcp_input.c:6264 tcp_v4_do_rcv+0x7f3/0x11a0 net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c:1916 tcp_v4_rcv+0x51df/0x5750 net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c:2351 ip_protocol_deliver_rcu+0x2a3/0x13d0 net/ipv4/ip_input.c:205 ip_local_deliver_finish+0x336/0x500 net/ipv4/ip_input.c:233 NF_HOOK include/linux/netfilter.h:314 [inline] ip_local_deliver+0x21f/0x490 net/ipv4/ip_input.c:254 dst_input include/net/dst.h:460 [inline] ip_rcv_finish+0x4a2/0x520 net/ipv4/ip_input.c:447 NF_HOOK include/linux/netfilter.h:314 [inline] ip_rcv+0xcd/0x380 net/ipv4/ip_input.c:567 __netif_receive_skb_one_core net/core/dev.c:5704 [inline] __netif_receive_skb+0x319/0xa00 net/core/dev.c:5817 process_backlog+0x4ad/0xa50 net/core/dev.c:6149 __napi_poll+0xe7/0x980 net/core/dev.c:6902 napi_poll net/core/dev.c:6971 [inline] net_rx_action+0xa5a/0x19b0 net/core/dev.c:7093 handle_softirqs+0x1a0/0x7c0 kernel/softirq.c:561 __do_softirq+0x14/0x1a kernel/softirq.c:595 do_softirq+0x9a/0x100 kernel/softirq.c:462 __local_bh_enable_ip+0x9f/0xb0 kernel/softirq.c:389 local_bh_enable include/linux/bottom_half.h:33 [inline] rcu_read_unlock_bh include/linux/rcupdate.h:919 [inline] __dev_queue_xmit+0x2758/0x57d0 net/core/dev.c:4493 dev_queue_xmit include/linux/netdevice.h:3168 [inline] neigh_hh_output include/net/neighbour.h:523 [inline] neigh_output include/net/neighbour.h:537 [inline] ip_finish_output2+0x187c/0x1b70 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:236 __ip_finish_output+0x287/0x810 ip_finish_output+0x4b/0x600 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:324 NF_HOOK_COND include/linux/netfilter.h:303 [inline] ip_output+0x15f/0x3f0 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:434 dst_output include/net/dst.h:450 [inline] ip_local_out net/ipv4/ip_output.c:130 [inline] __ip_queue_xmit+0x1f2a/0x20d0 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:536 ip_queue_xmit+0x60/0x80 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:550 __tcp_transmit_skb+0x3cea/0x4900 net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:1468 tcp_transmit_skb net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:1486 [inline] tcp_write_xmit+0x3b90/0x9070 net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:2829 __tcp_push_pending_frames+0xc4/0x380 net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:3012 tcp_send_fin+0x9f6/0xf50 net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:3618 __tcp_close+0x140c/0x1550 net/ipv4/tcp.c:3130 __mptcp_close_ssk+0x74e/0x16f0 net/mptcp/protocol.c:2496 mptcp_close_ssk+0x26b/0x2c0 net/mptcp/protocol.c:2550 mptcp_pm_nl_rm_addr_or_subflow+0x635/0xd10 net/mptcp/pm_netlink.c:889 mptcp_pm_nl_rm_subflow_received net/mptcp/pm_netlink.c:924 [inline] mptcp_pm_flush_addrs_and_subflows net/mptcp/pm_netlink.c:1688 [inline] mptcp_nl_flush_addrs_list net/mptcp/pm_netlink.c:1709 [inline] mptcp_pm_nl_flush_addrs_doit+0xe10/0x1630 net/mptcp/pm_netlink.c:1750 genl_family_rcv_msg_doit net/netlink/genetlink.c:1115 [inline] ---truncated---

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 5.5. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Demo Examples

Use of Uninitialized Resource

CWE-908

Here, a boolean initiailized field is consulted to ensure that initialization tasks are only completed once. However, the field is mistakenly set to true during static initialization, so the initialization code is never reached.


               
}
initialized = true;// perform initialization tasks

Use of Uninitialized Resource

CWE-908

The following code intends to limit certain operations to the administrator only.


               
}
$uid = ExtractUserID($state);
# do stuff
DoAdminThings();

If the application is unable to extract the state information - say, due to a database timeout - then the $uid variable will not be explicitly set by the programmer. This will cause $uid to be regarded as equivalent to "0" in the conditional, allowing the original user to perform administrator actions. Even if the attacker cannot directly influence the state data, unexpected errors could cause incorrect privileges to be assigned to a user just by accident.

Use of Uninitialized Resource

CWE-908

The following code intends to concatenate a string to a variable and print the string.


               
printf("%s", str);

This might seem innocent enough, but str was not initialized, so it contains random memory. As a result, str[0] might not contain the null terminator, so the copy might start at an offset other than 0. The consequences can vary, depending on the underlying memory.

If a null terminator is found before str[8], then some bytes of random garbage will be printed before the "hello world" string. The memory might contain sensitive information from previous uses, such as a password (which might occur as a result of CWE-14 or CWE-244). In this example, it might not be a big deal, but consider what could happen if large amounts of memory are printed out before the null terminator is found.

If a null terminator isn't found before str[8], then a buffer overflow could occur, since strcat will first look for the null terminator, then copy 12 bytes starting with that location. Alternately, a buffer over-read might occur (CWE-126) if a null terminator isn't found before the end of the memory segment is reached, leading to a segmentation fault and crash.

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